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Porsche Club of America
The Northeast Region

Upshifting

By Bruce Hauben, Bruce993@PorscheNet.com
NOR'EASTER Online - April 2006
Northeast Region Logo
Spring officially arrived yesterday and today I’m watching some snow fall. So much for the season’s change, at least we don’t have the ‘mud season’ of VT or ‘black fly season’ of VT, NH and ME. Every spring and fall I wonder if I missed something in the previous year’s change of season or have simply forgotten what and when things changed.
   
Case in point is the Goldfinch (NJ’s state bird) population around our neck of the woods. Yes, they’re supposed to be a migrating bird but like other populations, Robins and Canada Geese quickly coming to mind, many stay here all winter. I’ve been fascinated this spring in watching the many at our feeders slowly molt and change their colors. During the winter they’re a dull, drab olive and of course during the summer a brilliant yellow. During the past 2 weeks from an almost imperceptible tinge of yellow showing through the drabness they are now 50-75% towards their full bright yellows and I just don’t recall this from previous years.
   
Oh well, the point is that it’s definitely time to begin the wake up process for all those hibernating Porsche’s, whichever rear or mid-engine variety you’ve stored away for the winter. Those big, tall SUVs don’t count; they fight the salt and sand with fine mettle all winter long. Some of us are leaving next week for the Road Atlanta Club Race and others for the Zone 2 VIR DE the same weekend. I hope it’s warmer in Atlanta than Danville, I’m remembering last November at VIR when I had to scrape the frost off the windshield every morning. Yes, whooahhhh!!!!, I’m off my 13/13 and back to the race circuit.
   
The trickle charger – I don’t bother removing the battery, never have – has done its work, the RSA still looks clean from it’s final wax of last season, and the oil change in the fall allowed the engine to rest comfortably. About all I have to do is flush the brake fluid and she’s ready to rumble. Even though our garage is heated – a bit above freezing – I just don’t find it conducive to working on the 911 until the temperature is at least into the 60s. It’s as much a psychological as physical thing, I know, very much like scrapping frost off the windshield and then driving on the track. The two just don’t seem to go together.
   
And while we’re talking track here, WE DESPARATELY NEED INSTRUCTORS for our May 8 DE at NHIS. We have more than 20 brand new novices signed up for the event, anxious to get on the track after their morning of braking and skid pad exercises, and we’re woefully short of instructors. We’ve already set the instructors’ fee at a ridiculously low $25 for the event and are projecting a minimum of 2 hours on the track for the Red run group. I wish you instructors out there would tell me what it takes to get you motivated.
  
I don’t want to frighten away any prospective new drivers who might be thinking about signing up for the event. We have a very viable Plan B for the event and want everyone who may have this niggling thought in the back of their head that “maybe I should try this” to JUST DO IT. Sign up and come out on May 8 and learn first hand what it is about high-performance track driving that has hooked  so many of us.
   
We had the largest turnout ever at our February Ground School hosted by Joe Marko at HMS. More than forty prospective new drivers were given a great primer in track/driver/car safety by Joe, he really knows his stuff. And Steve Artick, last years Novice Development Chief and this year’s co-Chief Instructor and his other speakers, Joyce Brinton and Jennifer Artick, subbing for this year’s Novice Development Chief Frank Bruns who is still basking in the Texas warmth, did a bang-up job in presenting the ground school curriculum. The measure of the ground school’s success is that we have a better than 50% registration rate of attendees and still a month to go.
  
Elsewhere in this issue you’ll find information about our July Mont-Tremblant DE Event. It’s truly a win, win situation and I urge any and all to sign up for the 3 day, July 10-12 DE event. It’s smack-dab in the middle of the great FREE International Blues Festival held on multiple stages in the village of Mont-Tremblant where we’ve negotiated very nice rates with a hotel which are good for two days before and after our event. So you can either come up early, like many of us are planning to, or stay later after the DE and enjoy some fantastic Blues.
  
The other half of the win, win is the track itself, LCMT. We’ll have 3 days on a world-class, recently re-paved track with lots of run off space where needed. Forget about dinky, little Lime Rock and its pot holes, and no place decent to stay and dine after the track.  I, and many others, would rather drive one event at LCMT than six at Lime Rock.

Classics

    • Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself, "Lillian, you should have remained a virgin."  -          Lillian Carter (mother of Jimmy Carter)
    • I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. - Groucho Marx
    • I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back. - Zsa Zsa Gabor
    • Until I was thirteen, I thought my name was shut up. - Joe Namath
    • By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he's too old to go anywhere. - Billy Crystal
    • Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty...but everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out.  - Phyllis Diller
    • Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life. - Herbert Henry Asquith
    • Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. - Mark Twain
    • Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat. - Alex Levine
    • The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.  - Jilly Cooper
    • By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. – Socrates
    • The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.  - George Burns


AND LAST, BUT NOT LEAST..... 
We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress. -Will Rogers
 
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